Executive Recruiting Firm
KORE1 is the executive recruiting firm companies bring in when a leadership hire is too important to leave to a job board. Retained or engaged, confidential when it counts, run by recruiters who’ve filled the same seat before.
Last updated: June 20, 2026
An executive recruiting firm is a search firm hired to find, vet, and place senior leaders, the C-suite and VP roles that rarely get posted publicly. KORE1 has run retained and engaged executive search since 2005, our recruiters average more than 15 years on the desk, and 92% of the leaders we place are still in the role a year later.
Picking the firm is the first real decision you make in a senior search. Get it right and you see three people you’d actually hire. Get it wrong and you burn a quarter, then end up back where you started, only now with a seat still empty, a fee already paid out, and a team that quietly noticed the whole search go nowhere.
Most companies don’t engage a firm because they can’t write a job post. They engage one because the person they want isn’t reading job posts. The leaders worth hiring are employed, paid well, and not refreshing a careers page at eleven at night. Reaching them takes a recruiter who already knows them, or knows the one mutual contact they trust enough to pick up for, and no amount of clever job-post copy manufactures that kind of warm introduction. That network is the whole product, and it’s the part of recruiting no shortcut replaces.
We’ve run senior searches for two decades. Executive placements at KORE1 are almost always a direct hire engagement, handled by the same recruiters who staff our IT, engineering, and accounting and finance practices. If you want the people side of that, who the recruiters are and how they work, our executive recruiters page covers it. This page is about choosing the firm.
Why Companies Hire an Executive Recruiting Firm
An internal team is built to fill the roles that come up every month. A senior search is not that. It’s slower, quieter, and it lives or dies on relationships your recruiters spent years building. Asking an HR generalist to cold-call a sitting CISO between two dozen other reqs isn’t a fair fight, and the candidate can tell.
- Reach. The shortlist you want is mostly passive. A firm gets those calls answered because the candidate already knows the recruiter, or knows someone who does.
- Discretion. Replacing someone still in the chair, or hiring against a competitor, has to run off-market. That’s hard to do from inside your own org chart.
- Bandwidth. A real search eats 40 to 80 hours of senior recruiter time. Your team rarely has that to spare on top of everything else they own.
- Lower risk on the part that hurts. A senior mis-hire can cost well over a year of salary once you count the strong people who quit under the wrong leader, the roadmap that slips two full quarters, and the board that starts asking sharper questions on the very next call. A firm’s whole job is to take that number down.
How to Choose an Executive Recruiting Firm
Most firms sound roughly the same on the first call, all quiet confidence and a wall of client logos. What actually separates them only shows up once you ask a few pointed questions before signing anything, so here are the ones worth pressing on.
- Have they filled this exact seat? A firm that places CFOs all day is not the firm to run your CISO search. Ask for the last three placements in your function, not a logo wall.
- Will they tell you which fee model fits, or just sell the one that pays them most? The honest answer to “retained or contingency” depends on your role. A firm that won’t say is telling you something.
- What’s the guarantee, and what’s the replacement rate? A real number beats a promise. Ours is 92% still in seat at a year, and we’ll put the replacement terms in writing.
- Who actually runs the search day to day? You’ll often meet a polished partner during the pitch and then watch a junior sourcer quietly inherit the real work once the contract is signed, so ask plainly who will be on the phone with your candidates and how often you can expect to hear from them.
- Can they staff what comes next? A new leader’s first ask is usually a team. A firm tied into broader engineering and IT benches can build it. A boutique can’t.
Still in Seat at 12 Months
Years Running Executive Search
Specialized Industry Verticals
Retained, Engaged, or Contingency: Which Firm Model Fits
| Model | Best For | How You Pay |
|---|---|---|
| Retained | Confidential, board-level, and genuinely scarce roles | Staged fee across the search |
| Engaged | Important roles that need real priority, short of full retainer | Small commitment up front, balance on placement |
| Contingency | Strong director-level searches in a healthy talent market | Paid only when you hire |
Retained means you commit to the search and we commit our senior bench to it. You pay in stages, so the firm is paid to run the process well rather than to win a sprint to your inbox. Engaged sits in the middle. Contingency is lower commitment and the firm spreads its effort across more clients, which is fine for the right role and a real handicap for the wrong one. The Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants draws the same line, and any firm worth hiring will walk you through it without flinching.
Treat a senior search as workforce strategy, not a transaction, because the math isn’t in your favor. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects top-executive roles to keep growing into the early 2030s, while the bench of people who can genuinely run a function at that level isn’t growing anywhere near as fast. That gap is the entire reason an executive recruiting firm exists. It’s also why the candidates you want already have two other conversations going the week you finally call.
What a Real Executive Recruiting Firm Delivers
We aren’t the right firm for every hire. When the seat is senior and a miss would hurt, here’s what working with us looks like.
Partners Who Know the Seat
Senior consultants who’ve placed your exact role before. They screen on judgment, not keywords, and they tell you when a search isn’t working.
Reach Past the Database
The best leaders aren’t applying anywhere. We reach them through relationships built over twenty years, not a database license.
A Guarantee That Means It
92% of our placements are still in seat at a year, and the replacement terms go in writing. No fine print surprises.
Built for the Whole Org
Once a CTO or VP of Engineering lands, they need a team. The same benches build it.
Common Questions About Executive Recruiting Firms
What is an executive recruiting firm?
An executive recruiting firm is a specialized search firm companies hire to find and place senior leaders, the VP, director, and C-suite roles that rarely get posted. The work is mostly relationships and judgment, not job ads. A firm maps who’s doing the role well today, reaches the ones who aren’t looking, pressure-tests them against what your seat actually needs, and manages the offer so a strong candidate doesn’t walk over something fixable. Executive search firms are sometimes called retained search firms or headhunters, and though those labels get tossed around loosely, they all point at the same thing, a firm paid to go find leaders who would never have answered a job ad on their own.
How do you choose the right executive recruiting firm?
Start with proof they’ve filled your exact seat, then check whether they’re honest about fee models and what their placements look like a year later. Ask for the last three searches in your function, not a client logo wall. Ask who actually runs the search day to day, since the partner who pitches you isn’t always the person on the phone with candidates. And ask about the guarantee in real numbers. A firm that quotes you a real replacement rate and then puts it in writing is telling you something a glossy pitch deck never can, because that number only looks good if their placements actually stick.
How much does an executive recruiting firm charge?
Most firms charge 20% to 35% of the hire’s first-year base, structured either as contingency, paid only on placement, or as a staged retainer for confidential and hard-to-fill searches. Retained fees split into stages so the firm is paid to run the process, not just to win a race to your inbox. We don’t charge an upfront retainer for standard contingency searches, and we walk through both structures on the intake call before you commit. The right number depends on the role, the urgency, and how thin the candidate pool really is, which is exactly why a firm that quotes you a flat percentage before hearing a single detail about the search is mostly guessing.
Retained or contingency firm: which should you use?
Use a retained firm for confidential, board-level, or genuinely scarce roles, and contingency for a strong director-level search in a healthy market. Retained buys you priority and senior attention because the firm is paid in stages to run a dedicated search whether or not it ends in a hire. Contingency is lower commitment, but the firm spreads its effort across many clients, so your role competes for attention. We run both at KORE1, and we recommend the one that fits your search, not the one with the bigger check attached.
Should you use an executive recruiting firm or hire in-house?
Use a firm when the people you want are passive, the role is confidential, or your team doesn’t have 40-plus hours to give one search. In-house recruiting is built for steady, postable roles and it’s great at that. Senior search is a different animal, slower and far more relationship-heavy than volume hiring, and handing it to a generalist pulls them off the two dozen other openings they already own without giving them the network the search actually needs. Plenty of companies run both, keeping volume hiring in-house and handing the one seat that can’t slip to a firm. We’re happy to tell you on the first call if your search is one you could run yourselves.
What roles and industries does KORE1’s executive search cover?
Technology, security, finance, and engineering leadership, plus fractional and interim seats across eight specialized verticals. That includes CIOs, CTOs, chief AI officers, CISOs, chief data officers, CFOs, controllers, and VPs and directors across engineering and operations. Because the executive desk shares a bench with our broader IT, engineering, and finance practices, we can build out the team beneath a leader once they’re hired, which is usually the next thing a new executive needs anyway.
Choosing an Executive Recruiting Firm?
Start with a short, confidential call. Tell us what the seat has to fix and what’s gone wrong with senior hiring before, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right firm for it. No retainer to talk.